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The Awakening (Doctor Who)
Encyclopedia
The Awakening is a serial in the British
science fiction
television series Doctor Who
, which was originally broadcast in two parts on 19 and 20 January 1984.
. The Doctor
must also face the villagers of Little Hodcombe, who have been influenced by the Malus, and save Tegan
before she is burned as the ill-fated Queen of the May.
and destroyed each other. As the story begins, a group of Roundheads are riding horses in the village of Little Hodcombe, with little regard to the villagers around them. Only it is not 1643, it is 1984.
A schoolteacher, Jane Hampden, is convinced that her fellow villagers, led by the town’s leader, Sir George Hutchinson, have taken their re-enactment of a series of war games too far. Hutchinson attempts to assure her that the games are a harmless event, which are merely to celebrate the English Civil War. When Hampden asks him to stop the games, Hutchinson ignores her.
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor promises to take his companion, Tegan, to 1984 so she could spend some time with her grandfather, Andrew Verney. The Doctor sets the coordinates to Little Hodcombe, where Verney resides. However, the TARDIS
experiences some turbulence and arrives in what appears to be a structurally unstable church. The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, while watching on the scanner, see a man in 17th Century clothing, fleeing from the church and the Doctor dashes out to help him. However, the man has now vanished. Tegan is convinced that they have landed in the wrong time zone. However, Turlough tells her that he had checked the TARDIS coordinates and they were in 1984. As the Time Lord
and his companions continue pursue the man, smoke starts to billow from a crack in the wall.
Eventually, the three travellers are captured by Captain Joseph Willow and taken to Sir George Hutchinson. The Doctor and his companions are first brought before Hampden and Colonel Ben Woolsey, who apologizes for the poor treatment that they received. Hutchinson arrives and explains to the Doctor that the town is celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Little Hodcombe and then he urges him to join the celebration. Tegan then explains that they have come to this village to see her grandfather, Andrew Verney. She is informed that her grandfather is missing, and runs outside the room, upset. The Doctor follows but loses her. Tegan, still upset, is crying when someone steals her purse. She tries to get it back and she runs into a barn where she finds the ghost of an old man.
The Doctor returns to the church and meets a 17th Century peasant, Will Chandler, who emerges from a wall. He has been hidden in a priest hole
and believes the year to be 1643. Turlough eventually rescues Tegan from the barn and they return to the TARDIS, where they see a sparkly projection on one of the walls. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Will investigate the church. Tegan and Turlough leave the TARDIS and they are re-captured. Turlough is locked in a building with Verney. Willow forces Tegan to change into a 17th century costume. He informs her that she is to become the Queen of the May.
The Doctor and Will continue to investigate. Eventually they find a secret passage back to Ben Woolsey’s living room under a slab marked with a picture of a creature that Will identifies as the Malus. Coming the other way through the passage, the Doctor and Will meet up with Hampden, who found the passage’s other end by accident after being locked in Colonel Wolsey's office. They avoid Hutchinson, who has followed Jane down the passage, and the Doctor finds a small ball of metal. The Doctor identifies the metal as “tinclavic,” a metal “mined by the Terileptils on the planet Raaga for the almost exclusive use of the people of Hakol,” a planet in the “star system Rifta,” where “psychic energy is a force to be harnessed.”
Returning to the church, the Doctor and Hampden are astonished when a massive alien face pushes its way through the crack on the wall, roaring and spewing smoke. They manage to escape from the psychic projection of a cavalier, and head back to the house via the tunnel. The Doctor realises that the Malus in the church was discovered by Verney and Hutchinson. The latter tried to exploit the creature, but instead, the creature began to use him by organizing the war games. He deduces that the psychic energy released by the war games has fed the Malus. The Doctor and Jane again try to persuade Hutchinson to stop the games, as the final battle will be for real. He refuses and orders Woolsey to kill the Doctor. However, once Hutchinson leaves, Woolsey joins forces with the Doctor.
The Queen of the May is taken in a horse-drawn cart towards the village green, where she is to be burned. When the cart arrives, Hutchinson suddenly noticed that the Queen is not Tegan, but a straw dummy that has been put in her place by Woolsey. Hutchinson becomes angry and he orders his men to kill Woolsey and the others. Will appears in the nick of time and uses a flame torch to cause a distraction, which allows the Doctor, Hampden, Woolsey and Tegan to escape and get back to the TARDIS. The Doctor locks the signal conversion unit on the frequency of the psychic energy feeding the Malus, hoping to be able to direct it. Willow and a trooper try in vain to break their way into the TARDIS, and Turlough and Verney knock them unconscious with lumps of masonry. The Doctor succeeds in blocking the energy, and the projection of the Malus in the TARDIS dies. The real Malus, in an act of desperation, attempts to drain as much psychic energy from the villagers as possible. He creates a corporeal projection of three roundheads who try to kill the Doctor, Woolsey, Tegan, Turlough, Hampden, Verney and Will. However, the dazed and confused trooper stumbles from the TARDIS and into the main church area, becomes surrounded by the roundheads, and they decapitate him then vanish.
Hutchinson arrives and holds them all at gunpoint. When the Doctor tries to talk Hutchinson out of the thrall of the Malus, Willow attacks the group. In the scuffle, Will pushes Hutchinson into the mouth of the Malus, destroying the Malus's medium. Realizing it has failed, the Malus prepares to destroy itself and everything around it. Subsequently the church begins to collapse and the Doctor leads the others, including Willow, into the safety of the TARDIS.
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor's companions are surprised to see Will still among them. The Doctor explains that he must have been wrong in his assumption that Will was a psychic projection. He then says that the Malus must have created a temporal rift, which allowed Will to slip into the future. The Time Lord then says that he will take Will back to 1643. Tegan objects and ask the Doctor to allow her some time to visit her grandfather. The Doctor is initially disgruntled but he is persuaded to stay in Little Hodcombe for a while for a rest.
, was published by Target Books
in February 1985.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
television series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, which was originally broadcast in two parts on 19 and 20 January 1984.
Synopsis
This story features a creature known as the Malus, who is responsible for creating a time link between the year of 1984 and the events from the English Civil WarEnglish Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
. The Doctor
Doctor (Doctor Who)
The Doctor is the central character in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, and has also featured in two cinema feature films, a vast range of spin-off novels, audio dramas and comic strips connected to the series....
must also face the villagers of Little Hodcombe, who have been influenced by the Malus, and save Tegan
Tegan Jovanka
Tegan Jovanka is a fictional character played by Janet Fielding in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An Australian airline stewardess and a native of Brisbane who was a companion of the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, she was a regular in the programme from 1981 to...
before she is burned as the ill-fated Queen of the May.
Plot
On 13 July 1643, two forces came to the village of Little Hodcombe during the English Civil WarEnglish Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
and destroyed each other. As the story begins, a group of Roundheads are riding horses in the village of Little Hodcombe, with little regard to the villagers around them. Only it is not 1643, it is 1984.
A schoolteacher, Jane Hampden, is convinced that her fellow villagers, led by the town’s leader, Sir George Hutchinson, have taken their re-enactment of a series of war games too far. Hutchinson attempts to assure her that the games are a harmless event, which are merely to celebrate the English Civil War. When Hampden asks him to stop the games, Hutchinson ignores her.
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor promises to take his companion, Tegan, to 1984 so she could spend some time with her grandfather, Andrew Verney. The Doctor sets the coordinates to Little Hodcombe, where Verney resides. However, the TARDIS
TARDIS
The TARDISGenerally, TARDIS is written in all upper case letters—this convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s...
experiences some turbulence and arrives in what appears to be a structurally unstable church. The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, while watching on the scanner, see a man in 17th Century clothing, fleeing from the church and the Doctor dashes out to help him. However, the man has now vanished. Tegan is convinced that they have landed in the wrong time zone. However, Turlough tells her that he had checked the TARDIS coordinates and they were in 1984. As the Time Lord
Time Lord
The Time Lords are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' eponymous protagonist, the Doctor, is a member...
and his companions continue pursue the man, smoke starts to billow from a crack in the wall.
Eventually, the three travellers are captured by Captain Joseph Willow and taken to Sir George Hutchinson. The Doctor and his companions are first brought before Hampden and Colonel Ben Woolsey, who apologizes for the poor treatment that they received. Hutchinson arrives and explains to the Doctor that the town is celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Little Hodcombe and then he urges him to join the celebration. Tegan then explains that they have come to this village to see her grandfather, Andrew Verney. She is informed that her grandfather is missing, and runs outside the room, upset. The Doctor follows but loses her. Tegan, still upset, is crying when someone steals her purse. She tries to get it back and she runs into a barn where she finds the ghost of an old man.
The Doctor returns to the church and meets a 17th Century peasant, Will Chandler, who emerges from a wall. He has been hidden in a priest hole
Priest hole
"Priest hole" is the term given to hiding places for priests built into many of the principal Catholic houses of England during the period when Catholics were persecuted by law in England, from the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558....
and believes the year to be 1643. Turlough eventually rescues Tegan from the barn and they return to the TARDIS, where they see a sparkly projection on one of the walls. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Will investigate the church. Tegan and Turlough leave the TARDIS and they are re-captured. Turlough is locked in a building with Verney. Willow forces Tegan to change into a 17th century costume. He informs her that she is to become the Queen of the May.
The Doctor and Will continue to investigate. Eventually they find a secret passage back to Ben Woolsey’s living room under a slab marked with a picture of a creature that Will identifies as the Malus. Coming the other way through the passage, the Doctor and Will meet up with Hampden, who found the passage’s other end by accident after being locked in Colonel Wolsey's office. They avoid Hutchinson, who has followed Jane down the passage, and the Doctor finds a small ball of metal. The Doctor identifies the metal as “tinclavic,” a metal “mined by the Terileptils on the planet Raaga for the almost exclusive use of the people of Hakol,” a planet in the “star system Rifta,” where “psychic energy is a force to be harnessed.”
Returning to the church, the Doctor and Hampden are astonished when a massive alien face pushes its way through the crack on the wall, roaring and spewing smoke. They manage to escape from the psychic projection of a cavalier, and head back to the house via the tunnel. The Doctor realises that the Malus in the church was discovered by Verney and Hutchinson. The latter tried to exploit the creature, but instead, the creature began to use him by organizing the war games. He deduces that the psychic energy released by the war games has fed the Malus. The Doctor and Jane again try to persuade Hutchinson to stop the games, as the final battle will be for real. He refuses and orders Woolsey to kill the Doctor. However, once Hutchinson leaves, Woolsey joins forces with the Doctor.
The Queen of the May is taken in a horse-drawn cart towards the village green, where she is to be burned. When the cart arrives, Hutchinson suddenly noticed that the Queen is not Tegan, but a straw dummy that has been put in her place by Woolsey. Hutchinson becomes angry and he orders his men to kill Woolsey and the others. Will appears in the nick of time and uses a flame torch to cause a distraction, which allows the Doctor, Hampden, Woolsey and Tegan to escape and get back to the TARDIS. The Doctor locks the signal conversion unit on the frequency of the psychic energy feeding the Malus, hoping to be able to direct it. Willow and a trooper try in vain to break their way into the TARDIS, and Turlough and Verney knock them unconscious with lumps of masonry. The Doctor succeeds in blocking the energy, and the projection of the Malus in the TARDIS dies. The real Malus, in an act of desperation, attempts to drain as much psychic energy from the villagers as possible. He creates a corporeal projection of three roundheads who try to kill the Doctor, Woolsey, Tegan, Turlough, Hampden, Verney and Will. However, the dazed and confused trooper stumbles from the TARDIS and into the main church area, becomes surrounded by the roundheads, and they decapitate him then vanish.
Hutchinson arrives and holds them all at gunpoint. When the Doctor tries to talk Hutchinson out of the thrall of the Malus, Willow attacks the group. In the scuffle, Will pushes Hutchinson into the mouth of the Malus, destroying the Malus's medium. Realizing it has failed, the Malus prepares to destroy itself and everything around it. Subsequently the church begins to collapse and the Doctor leads the others, including Willow, into the safety of the TARDIS.
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor's companions are surprised to see Will still among them. The Doctor explains that he must have been wrong in his assumption that Will was a psychic projection. He then says that the Malus must have created a temporal rift, which allowed Will to slip into the future. The Time Lord then says that he will take Will back to 1643. Tegan objects and ask the Doctor to allow her some time to visit her grandfather. The Doctor is initially disgruntled but he is persuaded to stay in Little Hodcombe for a while for a rest.
Continuity
- No explanation is given for companionCompanion (Doctor Who)In the long-running BBC television science fiction programme Doctor Who and related works, the term "companion" refers to a character who travels with, and shares the adventures of the Doctor. In most Doctor Who stories, the primary companion acts as both deuteragonist and audience surrogate...
KamelionKamelionKamelion is a fictional character from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A shape-changing android voiced by Gerald Flood in its default form, it is a companion of the Fifth Doctor and appears in the television series in two serials between 1983 and...
's absence from this story. - The Doctor mentions the Terileptils mining tinclavic on the planet Raaga. Script editorScript editorA script editor is a member of the production team of scripted television programmes, usually dramas and comedies. The script editor has many responsibilities including finding new script writers, developing storyline and series ideas with writers, ensuring that scripts are suitable for production...
Eric Saward added this in the script to create a reference to his own story The Visitation (1982). He had planned to write another story featuring the Terileptils, and wanted to make sure the audience remembered who they were. But as events worked out, Saward never wrote their planned return. - This was the first story to feature alterations to the Fifth Doctor's costume. The Doctor wears a lighter-coloured frock coat, and a white "v-neck" cricketer's sweater with thick red and black piping around the "v" and the lower waist, as opposed to the costume he wore during the previous two seasons where the "v-neck" piping was thin and coloured red, white and black and there was no piping around the waist. The shirt is also altered with green lining on the collar and where the shirt is buttoned, instead of red. The Doctor disposed of his original costume in episode 2 of the previous story, Warriors of the Deep, in which he disguised himself in the uniform of a Sea Base 4 guard; it is possible he never retrieved his costume from the base before he left. The Fifth Doctor would wear the secondary version of his costume for the remainder of the season, save for most of Planet of FirePlanet of FirePlanet of Fire is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts from 23 February to 2 March 1984...
(1984). The newly regeneratedRegeneration (Doctor Who)Regeneration, in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, is a biological ability exhibited by Time Lords, a race of fictional humanoids originating on the planet Gallifrey. This process allows a Time Lord who is old or mortally wounded to undergo a transformation into a new...
Sixth DoctorSixth DoctorThe Sixth Doctor is the sixth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by Colin Baker...
would also be seen wearing it during the first episode of his debut story, The Twin DilemmaThe Twin DilemmaThe Twin Dilemma is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts from 22 March to 30 March 1984, the first to star Colin Baker in the title role.-Synopsis:...
(1984). - The Seventh DoctorSeventh DoctorThe Seventh Doctor is the seventh incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by the actor Sylvester McCoy....
encounters the other half of the Hakolian war machine that became the Malus in the Past Doctor AdventuresPast Doctor AdventuresThe Past Doctor Adventures were a series of spin-off novels based on the long running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who and published under the BBC Books imprint. For most of their existence, they were published side-by-side with the Eighth Doctor Adventures...
novel The Hollow MenThe Hollow Men (Doctor Who)The Hollow Men is a BBC Books original novel written by Martin Day and Keith Topping and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Seventh Doctor, and Ace and uses elements from the Fifth Doctor serial The Awakening.-Synopsis:Hexen Village,...
.
Production
- The working titles of this story were War Game and Poltergeist.
- Pringle had submitted this story in the mid-1970s to then-script editor Robert HolmesRobert Holmes (scriptwriter)This entry is about the television scriptwriter. For other people with the same name, see Robert Holmes .Robert Colin Holmes was an English television scriptwriter, who for over twenty-five years contributed to some of the most popular programmes screened in the UK...
as a four-part story entitled War Game. In the 1980s he resubmitted his story (as well as a different four-parter, The Darkness, possibly featuring the Daleks) to script editor Eric SawardEric SawardEric Saward was born on 9 December 1944 and became a scriptwriter and script editor for the BBC, resigning from the latter post on the TV programme Doctor Who in 1986....
. Realizing the story did not have enough impact for four episodes, it was later pared down to two, renamed Poltergeist and then finally The Awakening. - The story featured extensive location shooting and studio work. Saward wanted to add a TARDIS sequence with Tegan and Kamelion, utilising the robotRobotA robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
prop and played in chameleonic form by Peter Davison and Mark Strickson. However, this scene was cut from the transmitted episode for timing reasons. The recovery of an early edit of episode one on video (in the personal archive of late producer John Nathan-Turner) means that this element, previously thought lost, may now be included on a DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
release of the serial. A small part of the scene has appeared in the documentary Kamelion: Metal Man which featured on the DVD release of The King's DemonsThe King's DemonsThe King's Demons is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was originally broadcast in two parts on March 15 and March 16, 1983...
. - The master tape for Part One was found to have some scratch damage when the 1984 compilation version was being mastered; no protection copy was made at that time so the original tx master continued to deteriorate. The tape was checked in the early 1990s and the scratch damage found to be far more intrusive than it had been in 1984; fortunately, the original film sequences were kept and using these, the compilation copy and the reprise from part 2, in 1997 the Doctor Who Restoration TeamDoctor Who Restoration TeamThe Doctor Who Restoration Team is a loose collection of Doctor Who fans, many within the television industry, who restore Doctor Who episodes for release on DVD....
were able to make a repaired master copy. This was used for the VHS release. - This was officially the final story of the series to consist of two 25-minute episodes. All two-parters since then have been 45 minutes long per episode, including most of season 22 and several stories of the revived series. The Ultimate FoeThe Ultimate FoeThe Ultimate Foe is the generally accepted title for a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in two weekly parts from 29 November to 6 December 1986. It is part of the larger narrative known as The Trial of a Time Lord, encompassing the whole...
, the concluding segment of The Trial of a Time LordThe Trial of a Time LordThe Trial of a Time Lord is a fourteen-part British science fiction serial of the long running BBC series Doctor Who. The serial, produced as the twenty-third season of the Doctor Who television series, aired in weekly episodes from 6 September to 6 December 1986...
, is numbered on screen as Parts Thirteen and Fourteen of the latter title; furthermore, they share the same BBC production code, 7C, with the preceding four-part story arc, Terror of the VervoidsTerror of the VervoidsTerror of the Vervoids is the title commonly used for a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 1 November to 22 November 1986. It is part of the larger narrative known as The Trial of a Time Lord, emcompassing the...
, even though they have their own separate novelisation and feature compilation. - The production designer for this story, Barry Newbery, had worked on Doctor Who intermittently ever since its very first story. After completing Awakening, Newbery took early retirement from the BBC, making this story his last professional effort.
- John Nathan-Turner liked the character of Will Chandler a great deal and seriously considered keeping him on as a companion. However, it was eventually concluded that Chandler's child-like character would quickly wear thin and lacked any clear path of development, so Nathan-Turner dropped the idea.
In print
A novelisation of this serial, written by Eric PringleEric Pringle
Eric Pringle is a British writer for radio and television. He has also written three novels for children....
, was published by Target Books
Target Books
Target Books was a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became well known for their highly successful range of...
in February 1985.
Broadcast and VHS release
- This story was released on a double VHSVHSThe Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
set with FrontiosFrontiosFrontios is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts from 26 January to 3 February 1984.-Synopsis:...
in March 1997. - The DVD was released in a box set named Earth Story along with The GunfightersThe GunfightersThe Gunfighters is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, set in 19th Century America on the days leading up to the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral...
on 20th June 2011.
External links
- The Awakening on BBCWorldwideTVBBC WorldwideBBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in 1995. In the year to 31 March 2010 it made a profit of £145m on a turnover of £1.074bn. The company had made a profit of £106m...
YoutubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
channel